War with no face
by mfindlow
Summary: Stannis is up against a faceless army determined to defeat him.


Snow. All around him nothing but snow. A thick blanket of white as far as the eye could see, and for many miles more than that. Nothing but snow, snow and more fucking snow. Could there be a more godforsaken place that this? Even in the deepening twilight, stars broke out between the clouds overhead. Another clear cold night that would bring snowfalls by morning. As if they needed any more. Winter is coming. Those there the words of the house whose castle sought to retake. It's not coming, he thought. It's bloody well here. Who the fuck would want to live up here, let alone be their King? No wonder King's Landing had always ignored the North. Leave them to this miserable existence. But no, now he needed them, much as it grieved him to admit to.

This was worse than Castle Black. At least there they had shelter, smiths and armorers, and provisions, thought they would dwindle quickly with so many new mouths to feed. Castle Black wouldn't survive the winter if they had to support a thousand Wildings.

He'd been in many campaigns, but this one was the worse in his recollection. Every day they were losing men and horses by the dozens, not to swords and arrows, but to the cold and the snow. Frostbite, the sleeping death, horses breaking legs in unstable snow drifts. Ice had hindered them at every turn since leaving Castle Black, though it seemed only to worsen as they drove south rather than ease. Their food was all but gone, the horses a poor substitute. He wouldn't stand for his men eating the flesh of their fallen comrades. There was no honour in cannibalism, preferring to behead men for such behavior, but as the horse meat ran out, what lengths would he be forced to stoop to?

The Northmen disliked Stannis, a Southern pretender encroaching on their fiefdom, but they despised the Boltons more. The Boltons had betrayed House Stark, and that was unforgivable, made worse by the fact that it was a bastard and not a Bolton that now held Winterfell. Stannis had always found Roose Bolton a dour and thoroughly unpleasant man. Was it any wonder he should sire a bastard boy who liked to tear legs off insects, and who had since graduated to doing the same to unwitting human victims.

Stannis needed the North. He intended it only as a stop on his way south to retake firstly The Twins, and then head east for King's Landing, but it would serve as a good stronghold if he was penned back and forced to wait for his moment.

He saw the Great Keep of Winterfell rising up from the sea of white. A siege was not what he wanted. Ramsay would have them all starve on his doorstep within the moon's turn. What he needed was to draw Ramsay out and make an end of things. Though Ramsay had the numbers, it was better to go out fighting that to be remembered as the king whose army withered away into nothing. A battle over before it had even begun. Fucking winter.

He shouldn't have waited, he realised. Jon Snow had assured him the loyalty of the minor houses of the North, bolstering his own forces with more men. Weeks he'd wasted wandering the icy desolation, pandering to each lord's court for allegiance. He shouldn't have to beg for it; he was their King. And what had that brought him? More men to die from cold and starvation. He'd have reached the gates of Winterfell weeks ago, before the snow had set in, had he not taken the Lord Commander's advice. If the boy had just taken his original offer to claim back Winterfell for House Stark, he might not have wasted so much time begging petty lords for a hundred fighting men. For a Stark they might had raised their banners without question. They'd have swept southward in half the time and he'd have had someone there to hold Winterfell as he continued his push south. Instead he'd fought snowstorms and poor morale for countless days on end. No amount of beseeching the Red God had stretched their provisions nor melted a path through the impenetrable forest of ice. Fat lot of good a hundred Hornfoots and a handful of Mormonts did him now. The only thing more galling was then fact that they'd survived the trip south better than his own men. If they walked away now, he'd be left with nothing. It was ironic good fortune that the weather was now too harsh for them to turn back.

Then again, perhaps the Lord Commander had known this all along. He might have been grateful that the Night's Watch had been spared from being overrun by Wildlings, but there was no mistaking he seemed glad to be rid of Stannis. What use was it to say the Night's Watch took no part in the feuds of the Seven Kingdoms? The Seven Kingdoms had done nothing to help them against Mance; but he had. On the advice of the Red Woman certainly, but he'd come to their aid all the same.

A crunching sound behind him signaled the approaching footsteps of his most loyal lapdog.

'Have you even seen so much snow, Ser Davos?'

'I can't say that I have, Your Grace. The first time I saw snow was a winter docked in White Harbor. There's been no snow in Fleabottom in all the years of my life, and not much need for a smuggler's goods this far north.'

There was no snow at Dragonstone either, he thought, and he'd been certain that was the most godforsaken place on earth. It was nothing compared to this. Miles and miles of endless snow and misery and death.

'How many men, Ser Davos?' he asked. He didn't have to say any more.

'Two dozen more found this morning. A whole tent had to be dug out of the snow. The men died under the weight of it as they slept through the night.'

'Should have left them there,' he replied. The blanket of snow that had lain on top of them was the only protection they had now from the horrors yet to come. He wanted to send a raven to Ramsay Boston and tell him to come and face him like a man, but even the ravens were gone. Trapped now in the bellies of dead men. How long had it been since he'd eaten anything but horse meat?

'Your Grace, pardon my saying so, but I think we should continue to head south.'

Stannis turned to scrutinise the face that stood beside him in the growing dark. 'South? To be hemmed in by enemies on both sides? The Boltons hold Moat Cailin or have you forgotten?'

'It has not escaped me, Your Grace. However, the weather may be kinder to us, allow us to regain some strength.' He didn't want to say that Moat Cailin provided a better target for victory. 'This snow will decimate our remaining forces if we stay here.'

'Not snow, Ser Davos. Winter. Winter is what will kill us. But before it does I would rid the North of this usurper. Do you know what I am, Davos?'

'The one true King of Westeros,' he replied. Stannis wanted to laugh at that. At least he hadn't said the last true King.

'Exactly. Tell the men to be ready at dawn. We strike for Winterfell tomorrow.' Better to die covered in a blanket of blood than be remembered as the beggar king who perished a breath away from salvation.


End file.
